Meanwhile, a senior Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs official, Yang Jiechi, spoke with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the summit on the phone, the foreign ministry said.

Fumiyo Saito, 73, elder sister of Kaoru Matsuki, who was abducted at age 26 in 1980, said, "I think that (the resolution of the abduction issue) will fade away again, and I wonder how many years we must wait to reach a resolution". Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity.

Trump drew criticism during this week's Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam after he praised Kim and said he accepted his claims not to have been aware of how Warmbier was treated. "But I don't believe he knew about it", Trump said.

The parents of Otto Warmbier react to a standing ovation during President Trump's January 30, 2018, State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The United Nations and the United States ratcheted up sanctions on North Korea when the reclusive state undertook a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests in 2017.

The Japanese government said Trump raised the abduction issue in his negotiations with the North Korean leader at their Hanoi summit, which ended on February 28.

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"The dilemma that we were confronted with is the North Koreans at this point are unwilling to impose a complete freeze on their weapons of mass destruction programmes", the official told reporters.

That countered Trump's comments that he took Kim Jong Un "at his word" he wasn't aware of Warmbier's treatment. At the end of the talks, leader Kim said goodbye to Trump while "promising the next meeting", the report said without elaborating.

"In fact, as we take steps toward denuclearisation, the most important issue is security but we thought it would be more burdensome for the United States to take military-related measures, which is why we saw partial lifting of sanctions as corresponding action".

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